bloody miserable

bassnation

the abyss
is anyone else having the experience that they're having a miserable time and so is everyone around them?
can someone on dissensus tell me they're having a great time and tell me why and i'll feel alot happier.even if i'm feeling 20% happier than i was say an hour ago at any point something 30% more shit will come along and mess that up.

i felt better for a bit by listening to satta massa gana by the Abyssinians but that's stopped now.

please let me know that you're having a great time and why/

well, i used to have pretty much everything going for me - beautiful wife, money, living in a nice area etc. since the start of this year a lot of that has gone south and its safe to say 2007 has been my annus horriblis.

however, despite what reality is telling me, i just don't get depressed. its kind of weird. in my twenties i used to sit round moping (i look back now and think what did i have to be miserable about?) but now when bad things happen i'll feel unhappy for a while but soon i get bored of feeling sad and just sort of snap out of it.

maybe this is not a good thing - because my mood never dips for too long, i'm unlikely to deal with things which need to be dealt with, because it never gets so bad that its intolerable.

"Don't Worry Be Happy was a number one jam/Damn, if I say it you can slap me right here."
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I'm cheerful. I'm more happy than almost anyone I know."
I've only met you once and that for less than half an hour but you struck me as a noticeably happy type I have to say. Definitely left with the impression of a big smile coming from your end of the table.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
did that work for you paul? i have considered it following divorce providing i can get it on the nhs, not sure what the chance of that is.

Yeah, it did, but I was in so much pain I couldn't really go on. Plus I got the first wave of it for free from the hospice where my dad died - so the catholic church paid for my therapy! There's irony for you. :) I paid for later stuff though - it was worth it. Most painful and frightening thing I've ever done - I recommend it if you can find a good therapist.

I didn't realise you'd divorced, really sorry to hear that, and really glad you're bearing up.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
for real now. (irony-free as David Foster Wallace describes AA meetings)

i think a lot of us have "issues" from the past we need to deal with. it is very difficult, and often painful, but i think people generally feel much, much better after having dealt with them.

for me it's my family... seious issues. but i wont bore you with details.

great example of not taking my own advice - i haven't spoken to them for months and months. in the last 3 years i speak to them about twice a year... I am avoiding the situation to an extent. and i know that this is the main source of my problems. but knowing this... and knowing that if i "faced the music", and tried, and eventually maybe succeed, in forgiving... that i would be a much better person, and feel much better... knowing all this, still it is so difficult that i don't know where to start. or even if i can.

anyone see the Miyazaki cartoon Spirited Away? remember the "stink god" who was so weighed down by bullshit who was actually a dragon? i feel like that sometimes.

....

other than that i like everything about my life and am pretty happy in general. but this problem finds expression in many areas... in many things i do. i need help. really. i would go to therapy but not sure how to find one in Germany...

and of course, the approaching holidays, what other people look forward to, is always, always kind of scary for me... i'm scared that i'll sink into a depression. in the years that i don't have a girlfriend, when all my friends are with their families i'm always dreadfully alone for those months. who else knows what it's like to spend christmas eve alone?

_______________

EDIT: on the sunny side of things:

i am totally free. i've got a good job as a designer and i can do it from literally anywhere in the world. i've got a great flat with huge studio on the roof with great view. i work about 2 days a week and make decent money. i have great social skills, and have met some really lovely people since escaping LA. there is a very special girl but that's actually making me nervous at the moment... there are other girls around and they take the pressure off sometimes. so come next year i can literally do what ever i want - i can move to Istanbul, Cairo, Spain, China, or come to London and be miserable with you lot :D
 
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Lichen

Well-known member
i would go to therapy but not sure how to find one in Germany...



Slip over the border to Austria...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
maybe this is not a good thing - because my mood never dips for too long, i'm unlikely to deal with things which need to be dealt with, because it never gets so bad that its intolerable.

"Don't Worry Be Happy was a number one jam/Damn, if I say it you can slap me right here."

I worry about not 'cracking' sometimes - there's something that won't let my mood bottom out in a way that might be useful. But hell, I worry about a lot of things.

BUT I just found my long-presumed-lost 'Elvis never meant shit to me' T-shirt, so all is well! :)
 

zhao

there are no accidents
oh yeah austria is famous for their shrinks. or do you mean more specifically... from personal experience or actually know some good psychiatry places?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
this is certainly a part of the dynamic.

but "modern malaise" also has its roots in changing social conditions since the 20th. you must admit that communal, familial structures have been steadily fragmenting since, in an unprecedented way. you must take into account the experience of mass industrialization from the worker's view. you have to realize that "alone in a crowd" is a new experience for human beings. and finally, this will be a tough one for you T, the effects of our cutting-off from spiritual tradtions leaves a gaping hole in our lives that we have been trying to fill ever since.

Yeah, I hear you zhao - and I'm well aware of the oft-quoted fact that people who describe themselves as religious generally report higher levels of personal happiness than atheists - but it strikes me that perhaps babies who still suckle at the breast would turn out, if you could measure such a thing, to be happier than babies who've only just been weaned. Do you see what I'm getting at? The phenomenon of a large proporion of a population being atheistic, or at best agnostic, is a very recent development and it's only to be expected that society as a whole is going to take some time to adjust to this. Perhaps it's like going cold turkey when you come off an addictive drug; painful in the short term, but necessary in the long term to free yourself of a controlling influence that you don't need or, once you can think for yourself about it, really want.

I think your comments about family/community breakdown, general alienation etc. are spot on, though.
 

Lichen

Well-known member
but necessary in the long term to free yourself of a controlling influence that you don't need or, once you can think for yourself about it, really want.

But of the controlling influences that abound, religion is a very positive one. Better to be controlled by a broadly positive moral framework and the sacred, than consumer goods, substances, and money.


Also Christianity - the only faith I really know about - demands that you think of others; a trait which many people link with happiness. This is why community can make people happy; it takes you out of yourself and puts the focus onto those around you.


(for the record: I'm a miserable, godless, borderline alchoholic consumer)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But of the controlling influences that abound, religion is a very positive one. Better to be controlled by a broadly positive moral framework and the sacred, than consumer goods, substances, and money.

It doesn't have to be one or the other: I'm an atheist but I'm not a consumerist label-whore, drug fiend/alkie or miser, either.

Also Christianity - the only faith I really know about - demands that you think of others; a trait which many people link with happiness. This is why community can make people happy; it takes you out of yourself and puts the focus onto those around you.

Two points, here: firstly, surely it's better to be considerate, neighbourly etc. out of simply wanting to be like that, rather than for the promise of eternal reward (or threat of damnation!); secondly, look what has been done in the name of religion over the millennia and is still being done to this day. I mean, it's so glaringly at odds with the moral message supposedly proclaimed by most if not all religions as to be hardly worth mentioning...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
But of the controlling influences that abound, religion is a very positive one. Better to be controlled by a broadly positive moral framework and the sacred, than consumer goods, substances, and money.


Also Christianity - the only faith I really know about - demands that you think of others; a trait which many people link with happiness. This is why community can make people happy; it takes you out of yourself and puts the focus onto those around you.


(for the record: I'm a miserable, godless, borderline alchoholic consumer)

So long as it's not just 'thinking' of others, but doing something to help them, that is involved. I thinkt he reason so many are anti-religion is in reaction to the overwhelming piety and relative lack of action that they see in it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps

Hey, I'm not Richard Dawkins, I'm certainly not saying that everything people do for religion, or even everything religious people do, is necessarily bad. But I could spend the next ten minutes trawling Wikipedia for examples of wars, attrocities, terrorism, oppression and discrimination happening because of (or exacerbated by) religion, although I don't think I'll bother.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Hey, I'm not Richard Dawkins, I'm certainly not saying that everything people do for religion, or even everything religious people do, is necessarily bad. But I could spend the next ten minutes trawling Wikipedia for examples of wars, attrocities, terrorism, oppression and discrimination happening because of (or exacerbated by) religion, although I don't think I'll bother.

I appreciate that, but the religion causes war line is something of a stock argument that's endlessly trotted out. Less commented on are the (equally strong, if not stronger) connections between religion and charidee and morality.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
no we do not need religion. but what we do need is something that religion has been able to deliver: connection. to eachother, to ourselves, to the sacred (not goint to waste my time trying to define that at this time).

i think it's important to separate organized religion and what it has become, from that which religion has been providing human societies, that which is integral to the well being of our species.
 

Lichen

Well-known member
It doesn't have to be one or the other: I'm an atheist but I'm not a consumerist label-whore, drug fiend/alkie or miser, either.
..

Of course not, but my comments were in relation to happiness, or not being "bloody miserable" ( I really didn't want to derail the thread). And if you're in pursuit of happiness or contentment, it strikes me that you're better off being "controlled" by organised religion, than labels, substances, money and other agents of discontent.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yes, but you can have charity, morality etc. without religion, can't you? And while you can still have war, oppression etc. without religion, too, I think many examples of these would be less bad or non-existent if it weren't for religion.

There are people around these parts who'll tell you that charity is a fundamentally awful thing, too - although I'm not one of them.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i think it's important to separate organized religion and what it has become, from that which religion has been providing human societies, that which is integral to the well being of our species.

Then we need DISORGANISED RELIGION! People turning up to church at all different times, some of them reading from the King James version, a few priests trying to conduct a Mass in one corner, a load of black folks in nice outifts have a good sing-along over at the other end, some Muslims trying to study the Qu'ran and wishing the gospellers would shut up so they can concentrate, a bald dude in an orange robe meditating in a vestibule... :D
 
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